Esteban "Chachá" Vega Bacallao
1925-2007

Chachá is a legendary figure in Cuban percussion, having invented many
rhythms that are
still being played in Matanzas and Havana. He was a driving force in the formative
years of los Muñequitos de Matanzas.

Born August 3, 1925, Chachá started playing at age 13, in 1938. He was
an omo ochun, with Nov 29th being his ocha birthday. According to Tina
Gallagher:

His date of birth that he gave me in my interview with him was August 3, 1925--but many people here insist he was older than that. Evidently at the beginning of the century they weren't so great about recording births, particularly among the blacks, so when it came time after the revolution to issue identity cards they just approximated dates based on what the person told them. I don't know if that's true, but in any case he was my informant so I took the date he gave me.

He played bata and rumba with the Conjunto
Lirico Melodioso under Juan Mesa in the 40s. There he participated in rumbas
transition from cajon (wooden boxes) to congas, which are the instruments mostly used
today. As quintero, he dramatically expanded the range of rhythms played on the quinto, and
other musicians followed suite.

In 1952, he joined the Guaguanco Matancero, later to be called Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, 6 months after its founding.
He may not technically be a founding member, but is generally considered as such,
especially given his contribution to the group. He was a mainstay of the old Muñequitos
and left the group in 1964, when its character was changing.

He played batá, bembe, and other Yoruba and Congo percussion at religious ceremonies
throughout the province, where he was held in the highest esteem and was very well known.

In 1994, he ventured out of the country for the first time with a Yoruba oriented group
out of Santiago and went to Venezuela, where there is a very active santero community.

Chachá, like many Matanceros with African roots, was a member of an Abakwa
potencia,
Efik Yumane. This comes from the Efik nation of the Cross River delta in Nigeria.
Unlike Congo and Lukumi traditions, which tend to be more centered around the
family, the Abakwa potencias are men's groups.

We last saw Chachá at 73, still vigorously playing at toques with his group, Los
Tambores de Chachá, which includes Daniel Alfonso and Luis Cancino Morales. His house
was steeped in African
traditions, a venerable shrine to
those who knew him.

Chachá gave lessons in percussion to many folks. He was also a master drum maker and his drums are
prized by percussionists everywhere.

IBBAE, CHACHÁ, announcement from Los
Muñequitos on the occasion of Chachá's passing, 7/19/07

At this moment, when we are far from Cuba, we have received word of the death of the last surviving founder of Los Muñequitos de Matanzas: Esteban Vega Bacallao "Chachá”, stevedore, quinto master, possessor of one of the oldest sets of consecrated drums in Cuba, comparsero, maker of folkloric instruments, one of the first maestros of the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba, admired by Cubans and people from other lands, respected by everyone as one of the great figures of Matanzas culture.

This October 9 will mark the 55th anniversary of the first public performance by Los Muñequitos. The group was initially named Guaguancó Matancero, but with the love and esteem of the public, changed its name to become a transcendent symbol of Cuban folkloric music. Chachá was one of the initiators of this work. He was born without thinking of fame, and he became who he was without any other idea than that of expressing an impulse that derives from life in the poor barrios.

Stevedore in the port, from a very humble background, he went to parties, streetcorners, and bars, looking for the opportunity to play the drum, sharing with friends and brothers in religion, drinking beer and rum in the heat of the street, in the jams of “beodos” (drinking companions), enjoying the moment as if all of life depended on it. That was the formation of Los Muñequitos.

Chachá lived more than 80 years, but we still didn’t know him as well as we should have. As with all rumberos, time passed differently for him, or rather, time didn’t count, it sang, which is why we throw great rumbas for our dead, because only in that way can they leave the world as they lived, made as they are of music and drum.

Today we cannot be at your side, Chachá, but we will sing for you as if we were in La Marina and your drums were our flag, so that your life can be, like the lives of all those that created this group over more than half a century, the energy that makes us move forward, so that time can go on singing, so that our fire can go on burning and the life of our people can always have the sabor of our land.

African roots bind Cuba and New Orleans, and now five
New Orleans musicians have become the first African American group to join a privileged
Yoruban fraternity of ceremonial drummers and own a "family" of sacred drums.

"Weve linked the African chain from Africa to Cuba to the United
States," said well-known New Orleans drummer Bill Summers. "To me, as an African
American, that is a big deal." The drums were created and consecrated in ceremonies
over a period of two years by Cuban Esteban "Cha Chá" Vega, who Summers said is
"revered as the man, the high priest of drummers on the island." Cha Chá
also officiated at the initiation of the New Orleans musicians into the Yoruba fraternity
while Cuban master drummer Pancho Quinto, who visited New Orleans last year, participated
in the ceremony.

Summers was on his fourth visit to the island, furthering a musical and spiritual
relationship spanning 35 years. The innovative drummer of the local Latin jazz group
"Los Hombres Calientes" participated in the Havana
events of the January cultural trip, but said the trip to the Afro Cuban heartland of
Matanzas was his primary motivation in traveling to the island.

Summers said he has fought a long time to preserve the strong cultural, musical, and
African heritage connections that unite Cuba and the Crescent City, and rejected the
notion that communication and cultural ties between the two places suffered after the
Cuban Revolution. Many African Americans from New Orleans have defied political obstacles
and traveled to the island through third countries, he said. New Orleans black
residents "refuse to let political issues deter them from discovering their
heritage," Summers said. "It is important to me that what we did is
understood."

Cuba was the second-largest port of call of the colonial slave trade, after Brazil.
African influences percolate through Cuban culture, from rhythm to religion, and
Afro-Cubans are known for maintaining their African cultural traditions. Thats why
Summers took students Kito Johnson, 12, his brother Rashidi Johnson, 15, Southern
University law school graduate Gino Thomas, and his brother, UNO student Mashona Thomas,
to be initiated into the African Aña fraternity of drummers by the master of Cuban master
drummers, Cha chá.

The Aña fraternity is an African tradition of the Yoruba people, a privileged caste of
musicians who are the only ones able to play the sacred family of Bata drums -- the Iya
drum, meaning mother in Yoruba; the middle range drum, the Itotele, representing the
father; and the Okonkolo, meaning "little one, which plays a basic pattern which
holds the family together," Summers explained.

To be initiated, the men had to commit to memory 22 suites of music, featuring about
600 different rhythmic patterns. Two more of Summers students, Marcus Guillory and
Michawn McKnighten, will travel to Cuba to be initiated in April. The men traveled under
the auspices of the Summers Multi-Ethnic Institute of Arts, run by Bill Summers and his
musician wife, Yvette Summers.

New Orleans master drummers are scheduled to perform publicly for the first time at the
New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival this spring, opening for Carlos Santana at Lake
Front Arena during the first weekend of the festival and performing a Summers composition
at the fair grounds with master African drummers from Senegal, Brazil and Cuba.

"Weve been training people to participate in traditional African ceremonies,
things taken away during slavery," Summers said. "Most of the African spiritual
practices carried negative connotations that were promoted by those who enslaved Africans.
We must evaluate these things ourselves and among our own people. This is really the
purpose of my doing this with them."

- reprinted by permission of the author, originally published in the February issue of
La Prensa (e-mail: laprensa@nopg.com).

In August, 1993, Chachá accompanied a group put together by his godson, Milian Gali
Rivero, and composed of people from Santiago who specialize in Yoruba material. The
following interview is taken from an unknown newspaper, possibly in Venezuela but perhaps
in Cuba. The interviewer apparently is directing his questions to the godson, Gali, not
understanding the importance of his godfather, the legendary Chachá:

"We brought with us the first sacred batá with fundamento in
Santiago, which was made in Matanzas. We have to note that there is a difference, there
are other sacred batás with fundamento which were born in Havana," comented Gali
Rivero, who came accompanied by a small delegacion.

"This batá," chimes in
Chachá, represents a fundamento which is a saint [orisha]. Only we men can work with
these drums. Women cannot touch them. But women can dance to it. [Today, women in Cuba are
playing these drums, but without the fundamento -- they are playing drums for shows, not
for ceremonies.]

What is the religious significance of this drum with fundamento?

"It is a god who is in the drum. We are dealing with the orishas, that is the
saints. The santeros are those who ask that they be played in a fiesta, a
celebration," remarks Gali.

"The santeros," adds Chachá, pay for the right to have us play the drum and
set up the place where this will take place. One can play at an act around a death, to say
good by to the dead. You only have to pay the price we ask and offer the animals or food
that Ifá [the oracle] marks out.

This African heritage has undergone a certain transformation over the years?

"There has been a certain transculturation," replies Galli, "and one can
talk about the syncretization between christianity and the yoruba religion. But in the
ideas and the practices, it has remained pretty pure."

What is the significance of dance in Afrocuban cults?

Dance represents different elements according to the saint involved. The rhythms are
there to follow the religion," comments Chachá.

"The dance is based on the drum and its distinct rhythms, which correspond to each
orisha," puts in Buenaventura Morales. "The orisha can one or more different
rhythms, which the dancer will adopt. The dance is learned to the rhythm of the drum and
the chants in turn are based on the drum and the dance. The dancer adjusts to the
variacions in chants, which are inherited from Africa and were brought over to Cuba.

"The important thing is," adds Chachá, "Santeria has been understood on
a world level. Before it was only blacks, now there are more whites than blacks."

Dont you think this religion has been a bit commercialized? Does not the
interest you have awakened appeal more to money interest than to convictions?

Morales answers "Its possible, but in Cuba we have a system. But we
dont know how this is being carried into other countries and we are here to see how
our religion is being developed. Our objective is to see that everything is maintained
within our religious heritage and so arrive at a universal language."

Los Muñequitos de Matanzas were featured in an 8-minute segment on the
May 16 broadcast of CBS Sunday Morning, as a cultural segment of an entire program about
Cuba. The Director, Diosdado Ramos Cruz, was interviewed and also shown performing
his role as babalawo or priest in the Yoruba religion. The Musical Director, Jesus
Alfonso, was also interviewed, as was Ned Sublette, a producer and founder of Qbadisc, which has brought so much of the Muñequitos' music to the
US. One of los Muñequitos' founders, "Chachá"
Esteban Vega, a formidable legend, described the origins. Matanzas
was highlighted as the great center of African culture that it is.